DeMaris is newest member of Clearwater-Polk Board
Tue, 04/07/2015 - 10:47am
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Keith DeMaris was named the newest member of Clearwater-Polk Electric board at the annual meeting on Saturday, March 28th. The 68th annual meeting was held at the Bagley High School. CPA Mark Martens a partner with Eide Bailly LLP gave the financial report. 2014 was a good year financially for the and operationally for the Cooperative. The beginning of 2014 had a cooler than normal temperatures for the first three months, summer was normal, and winter started early. The cooperative had sales of 84,074,810 of killowats and a total revenue of $9,057,819. Cost of the electric service including power, operations, maintenance, taxes, interest long term debt, depreciation was $8,684,793 for an operating margin of $374,026.
Clearwater-Polk added 46 new services with 26 of them being for new homes. Nineteen services were rebuilt for large capacity and thirty were retired. There are 4,800 services connected on the network with 1,490 miles of distribution line.
Darrick Moe, General Manager of the Minnesota Rural Electric Association spoke to the group on distribution generation and net metering which the legislators are working on at the state level.
Distributed generation (DG) refers to power generation on site by residents such as solar roof panels.
Net metering is a billing mechanism that credits solar energy system owners for electricity they add to the grid. They are generating more electricity than the home used during daylight hours. Although not as much as could be generated in California.
He also spoke on Disaster relief assistance. Only 75 percent of federal funds are received by the co-op and they do not get the 25% of the state portion. They are working to get this fixed in case of an emergency.
A change has been made by the cooperative on each month’s billing cycle. They have added days to be on the same cycle as Minnkota, making the bill due by the 20th of the month.
They have also introduced a new billing system called Bill4U. You can view your bill online and pay with an electronic check, savings account or by credit.
Members of the advocacy board were introduced the newest member Al Rasmussen.